So I was planning out a series of posts

On zombies. But then I realized I had spent 3 whole minutes on this, and three minutes is far too much time to be spending on you guys. Here's the non-improvised version of the last speech Matt Li and I did for Eng H. last year instead (improvised version was that one we actually gave).

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[this I believe speech rough draft, jason’s part]

Nothing in life worth doing is easy

Just recently, I decided to learn how to lucid dream. To whoever doesn’t know what that is, lucid dreaming is being able to control what you dream about while you’re in one. My method of lucid dreaming was to lie perfectly still and stay awake until I entered sleep paralysis and went directly into a dream. Of course, I messed up the first two nights I tried it out, because I fell asleep the first time and opened my eyes too early the second time. So, I gave it up after two nights of failing. But, if I had succeeded, I could’ve done a lot of things in my sleep, like finding out what riding a dinosaur would be like, or swimming in a pool of money like some sort of swarthy Asian Scrooge McDuck. But, since I was lazy enough to quit after failing a couple of times, I wasn’t able to do this thing that was so obviously worth doing.

By now, you’re all thinking “But Jason can’t fail, he’s just too great!” Okay, you weren’t thinking that, but I was. You’re also thinking “If it were me, I wouldn’t quit so easily.” But I think you would. Who here’s gotten really worked up about something and then given up on it as soon as you realized it wasn’t easy? I have, and so have most of the people here. Everyone has, at some point. If I’d learned more than two chords on the guitar, I could’ve been one of those people who knew how to play three chords on the guitar. If I leveled faster in Maplestory in third, fifth, sixth, eighth grade, and last February (Yeah, I quit and started again a lot. Like a crack addict), I could’ve been one of those no lives with the awesome level 200 characters. If I wasn’t so lazy, I wouldn’t have written this speech on a Saturday afternoon instead of doing anything else in the world. Yes, none of these things were easy, so I took an easy way out. But if they weren’t hard they wouldn’t be worth doing, because nothing in life worth doing is easy. And before you ask, no, I didn’t get that from The Hangover, I got it from an episode of Scrubs.

If being good at basketball was so easy that anyone with two arms and two legs could become a major NBA player by next week, would getting into the NBA be worth doing? Would there even be an NBA? No one would’ve gotten tacos at the Lakers game last week, because their five year olds in the backyard were doing the exact same thing except without the star player committing rape. If being a godlike ping pong player was so easy, would Matt over here have starved himself just to make a weigh-in?

[matt’s part goes next]

[matt, i edited some parts, fill in the blanks]

For those of you that don't know me, I play ping-pong alot. My practice routine is a brutal 6-8 hours, more or less. Afterschool, I get to my ping-pong club in [location] and do 20 minutes of forehand, 20 minutes of backhand, 20 minutes of looping, 20 minutes of backhand flips, and 30 minutes of service. After that, I spend the next six hours doing practice games, drills, footwork, and [matt, i have no friggin idea what you do, fill in the blank here]

Even people at my ping-pong clubhouse give me weird looks when they see me at it. These people can’t get past their current ranking, no matter how many times they come in. Then, one day, an 18 year old guy in the club that I saw every single day practicing asked me why I’m able to win and get past the ranking slumps[explain how the ranking system works], and I told him that I just wanted to be better and enjoy table tennis. The way I answered made me realize that I really liked playing, and that ping pong was worth working at, and getting better at. After that, I pushed myself to get better and better.

Although ping pong usually ends up making me injure myself or I work myself into exhaustion, I continue to practice. Sometimes, I may doubt myself and ask why I even put up with this kind of training, but I end up thinking that it’s all worth it in the end. Right now, I have several sponsorships by major ping-pong related companies, I'm ranked [your rank here], and just yesterday I won my first game in [replace this part with a name, too clunky], all in a sport I love.

Playing ping pong isn't easy, but it shouldn't be. Nothing worth doing ever is.

(Jason, are you going to do an extra part for the ending?)

(no :D, also, can you fill out the bolded stuff in my revision?)